'The discipline of history in India is under attack--not only from those who adopt a pseudo-historical mode to popularize a mythical version of the past colored with their ill-concealed political objectives, but also from those who, posing methodological challenges through unbridled theoretical relativism emphasizing cultural specificity and difference, end up reorientalizing the Orientals. What is left unquestioned in both approaches is the hegemony of forms of thinking which underlie social and economic inequalities in the present. This book is a collection of essays - both published and unpublished - about the creation of Brahmanical hegemony through the institutions of caste, gender, and religious ideology in the history of early India. The essays focus on the role played by religion and mythology in the making of this hegemony. The studies in this book argue that myths reveal the stories of domination and resistance if we give attention to the process of their production and not take them as factual historical narratives. The idea is not to dismiss myths as false, distorted, or bad history but to examine the kind of reality they represent, to delve into the dynamics of their formation and their impact, and account for elements of continuity and change in them. Pursuing this line of argument, these essays build on the author's earlier classic study, The Origin and Development of Vaishnavism. The book has three thematic divisions: studies on caste-related social differentiation drawing on the sources for the history, society, and polity of early India as well as reviewing the work of R.S. Sharma, the eminent historian of the period; studies about the gendered development of Brahmanical hegemony; and studies on the historical valences of the various mythological incarnations in Vaishnava theology: Rama, Narasimha, and Hayagriva.

This book is a collection of essays - both published and unpublished - about the creation of Brahmanical hegemony through the institutions of caste, gender, and religious ideology in the history of early India. The essays focus on the role played by religion and mythology in the making of this hegemony.

The Boundaries of Mixedness tackles the burgeoning field of critical mixed race studies, bringing together research that spans five continents and more than ten countries. Research on mixedness is growing, yet there is still much debate over what exactly mixed race means, and whether it is a useful term. Despite a growing focus on and celebration of mixedness globally, particularly in the media, societies around the world are grappling with how and why crossing socially constructed boundaries of race, ethnicity and other markers of difference matter when considering those who date, marry, raise families, or navigate their identities across these boundaries. What we find collectively through the ten studies in this book is that in every context there is a hierarchy of mixedness, both in terms of intimacy and identity. This hierarchy of intimacy renders certain groups as more or less marriable, socially constructed around race, ethnicity, caste, religion, skin color and/or region. Relatedly, there is also a hierarchy of identities where certain races, languages, ethnicities and religions are privileged and valued differently. These differences emerge out of particular local histories and contemporary contexts yet there are also global realities that transcend place and space. The Boundaries of Mixedness is a significant new contribution to mixed race studies for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Sociology, History and Public Policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

This is the first full-length history of early Kashmir locating it beyond its regional context, from pre-history to the thirteenth century. Drawing on a variety of sources—including conventional archaeological and literary sources, as well as non-conventional sources like philology, toponym and surnames—it presents a connected history of early Kashmir over the longue duree. It challenges tendencies towards nationalist historiographies of the region by situating it in the context of the shared histories of humanity. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, anthropology and South Asian studies.

The descent of working class movements that began with neoliberal globalization is nearing completion. However, the ascent is yet to begin. This period is witnessing novel forms of organization and resistance. For students, activists and academics, it is imperative to understand changes in the modus operandi of capital since the 1970s to explain the crisis of conventional trade unionism, as well as the spontaneous outbursts of creativity in movements of informal workers in recent times. Delhi has been a centre of such innovative experiments. In the Valley of Historical Time attempts to understand these new forms and strategies and possibilities of resurgence of working class movements.

The work explores the representation of socio cultural margins of caste and gender in Indian contexts in works of fiction written in various Indian languages in the twentieth century, taking representative samples from Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam and English. The focus of enquiry is the narrativization of these important cultural and political questions in representative texts of fiction. What are the socio political and cultural implications and underpinnings of the representation of marginalization in the medium and genre of fiction, what could be the politics, ethics and aesthetics of such narrating, how far such representations are subversive or consensual/complicit, what are the limitations and pitfalls of such intervening radicalism in fictional narration all these questions are taken up in detail in the analyses. In the greater sense this study is also a critique of modernity and its discontents as it analyses the dialectics of modernity, its radical as well as reactionary aspects. A problematic premise of contextualizing the text and textualizing the context would also be prominent in the attempt. Fictional texts from five Indian languages including English (two texts from each language ) are incorporated in the study to ensure regional and linguistic representation within the limits of the availability of works in translation. Questions of class analytical perspectives in the context of Brahmanic patriarchy are explicated and critiqued. The need for a subaltern hermeneutics and the urgency of epistemological democratization are also discussed as a political and emancipatory outcome of the study. Both the formal as well as thematic concerns of the novel in the Indian languages are found to be shaped and determined by the material realities and associated attitudes and worldviews of caste and gender hierarchy emanating from internal imperialism. Though the ten texts chosen attempt intense critique of the gender question, the more profound and specific cultural question of caste evades comprehension and critical understanding. Caste often escapes as the un-representable in narration as it is in conversion.